Wandavision

[Clea]

Yeah, you shouldn’t have jumped to conclusions in a way that is insulting to the character.

Sometimes readers need to be reminded that just because a character has been around in Marvel stories for 40 or 50 years, doesn't mean that the characters have 40-50 years worth of 'real time' history and memories. The passage of time in Marvel comics is fuzzy. There's 'now' and there's 'previously' and both those time frames shift and compress and blur together constantly. So 'previously' Wanda had a lower level of power and was told she was a mutant, but 'now' she is a nexus being who is tapped into a cosmic-level magical energy source. So far as Wanda herself is concerned, everything in the of the last 50 years of real world storytelling time feels to her like maybe a few months to a couple of years. Time does not pass for these characters at the same rate that it passes for the readers. So Wanda isn't a 'slow learner' at all just because she transformed from one level of power to another over the last several decades of real world time. To her, it probably all feels like a fuzzy few months.

[Albert1981]

Yeah, you shouldn’t have jumped to conclusions in a way that is insulting to the character.

Yeah, that was my bad. And I apologize for that. But listen, I'm a guy who said Wonder Woman was dumber than dogshit for holding such naive and simplistic views in her first movie. And yes, for a casual reader of comic books like myself, I don't use sliding timescales. So if anybody, not just Wanda, took over half a century to get their magical real estate license, I'd look at them funny. And it's not me who's portrayed the Scarlet Witch as not being intelligent. Marvel Comics apparently has been doing that shit for twenty years!

[Albert1981]

Sometimes readers need to be reminded that just because a character has been around in Marvel stories for 40 or 50 years, doesn't mean that the characters have 40-50 years worth of 'real time' history and memories. The passage of time in Marvel comics is fuzzy. There's 'now' and there's 'previously' and both those time frames shift and compress and blur together constantly. So 'previously' Wanda had a lower level of power and was told she was a mutant, but 'now' she is a nexus being who is tapped into a cosmic-level magical energy source. So far as Wanda herself is concerned, everything in the of the last 50 years of real world storytelling time feels to her like maybe a few months to a couple of years. Time does not pass for these characters at the same rate that it passes for the readers. So Wanda isn't a 'slow learner' at all just because she transformed from one level of power to another over the last several decades of real world time. To her, it probably all feels like a fuzzy few months.

Thanks for the save, Clea!

[GenericUsername]

Sometimes readers need to be reminded that just because a character has been around in Marvel stories for 40 or 50 years, doesn't mean that the characters have 40-50 years worth of 'real time' history and memories. The passage of time in Marvel comics is fuzzy. There's 'now' and there's 'previously' and both those time frames shift and compress and blur together constantly. So 'previously' Wanda had a lower level of power and was told she was a mutant, but 'now' she is a nexus being who is tapped into a cosmic-level magical energy source. So far as Wanda herself is concerned, everything in the of the last 50 years of real world storytelling time feels to her like maybe a few months to a couple of years. Time does not pass for these characters at the same rate that it passes for the readers. So Wanda isn't a 'slow learner' at all just because she transformed from one level of power to another over the last several decades of real world time. To her, it probably all feels like a fuzzy few months.

This and people don't realize that Wanda did complete her magical training and take on an apprentice. So she has the experience. It just gets discounted a lot because she has natural magical abilities. So that perception takes hold over the training and people think she's still just winging it.

[gurkle]

To be fair we've never really seen much of Wanda's magical training in the comics. Agatha trained her for a short time and then cut off their lessons and left her to figure it out on her own. A number of comics have mentioned her not having much time to study magic -- one of the reasons she took on Holly as her apprentice is that she felt that she, herself, was becoming rusty in her magic studies and teaching Holly would be a way to improve her own skill. And in the Busiek run she mentioned that while she'd been practicing to improve her control of her power, a lot of what she's doing is still "instinct [and] guesswork."

When you consider how many times her powers have been redefined, it's not all that surprising that she would not be completely able to explain how she does what she does. In the context of the Busiek run, she only just found out her powers were magic when all this time she thought they weren't, and it's a form of magic that doesn't seem to be widely used by other sorcerers, so a lot of this she really does have to figure out on instinct and guesswork, rather than formal study. Especially when you consider that being an Avenger takes up a lot of her time and doesn't leave her much time for study (which is an interesting idea Bendis raised in Avengers Disassembled but never did anything with).

[CosmiComic]

What the hell is she wearing?

[gurkle]

What the hell is she wearing?

Ha... that's one of the very last appearances of the costume George Pérez designed for her in 1998. It was based on the costume she wore in an alternate reality where all the Avengers were transformed into medieval characters, and it was explained in-story as her getting in touch with her roots. But really it was just because George Pérez loved drawing her in that belly-dancer costume. It's not really something she should be wearing into battle, what with all that clothing to trip over and all that exposed skin.



No one else could draw it convincingly except Pérez, so after he left she got a new costume and no one ever used it again except Pérez in the JLA/Avengers crossover.

[CosmiComic]

Ha... that's one of the very last appearances of the costume George Pérez designed for her in 1998. It was based on the costume she wore in an alternate reality where all the Avengers were transformed into medieval characters, and it was explained in-story as her getting in touch with her roots. But really it was just because George Pérez loved drawing her in that belly-dancer costume. It's not really something she should be wearing into battle, what with all that clothing to trip over and all that exposed skin.



No one else could draw it convincingly except Pérez, so after he left she got a new costume and no one ever used it again except Pérez in the JLA/Avengers crossover.

Haha, I was being rhetorical. I never liked heroines having to wear such costumes while heroes remained covered

[GenericUsername]

To be fair we've never really seen much of Wanda's magical training in the comics. Agatha trained her for a short time and then cut off their lessons and left her to figure it out on her own. A number of comics have mentioned her not having much time to study magic -- one of the reasons she took on Holly as her apprentice is that she felt that she, herself, was becoming rusty in her magic studies and teaching Holly would be a way to improve her own skill. And in the Busiek run she mentioned that while she'd been practicing to improve her control of her power, a lot of what she's doing is still "instinct [and] guesswork."

When you consider how many times her powers have been redefined, it's not all that surprising that she would not be completely able to explain how she does what she does. In the context of the Busiek run, she only just found out her powers were magic when all this time she thought they weren't, and it's a form of magic that doesn't seem to be widely used by other sorcerers, so a lot of this she really does have to figure out on instinct and guesswork, rather than formal study. Especially when you consider that being an Avenger takes up a lot of her time and doesn't leave her much time for study (which is an interesting idea Bendis raised in Avengers Disassembled but never did anything with).

In the Infinity Gauntlet crossovers she uses what she's taught by Agatha while her then mutant powers were not able to be used to bring back Eric Masterson from shards of glass. So I think she's very adept at that point. Definitely not a novice. Agatha's tutelage wasn't shown a lot on panel, but that means nothing in ensemble comics, when she stated she had no more to teach her. So either she's blowing her off (I doubt it), nothing more than a novice herself (not at all) or Wanda's training was done.

There's also the Power Man and Iron Fist issue where she goes into what she's learned about magical idols and artifacts.

She got rusty in Vision and the Scarlet Witch but that says nothing about what she learned initially. That's more like an artist that hasn't drawn for a while.

[Probability010]

Yeah, that was my bad. And I apologize for that. But listen, I'm a guy who said Wonder Woman was dumber than dogshit for holding such naive and simplistic views in her first movie. And yes, for a casual reader of comic books like myself, I don't use sliding timescales. So if anybody, not just Wanda, took over half a century to get their magical real estate license, I'd look at them funny. And it's not me who's portrayed the Scarlet Witch as not being intelligent. Marvel Comics apparently has been doing that shit for twenty years!

Oh, good to know that, because that is another unfair assessment of a character. Where Wonder Woman was growing up was essentially a fairytale-word, where everything she was taught about good and evil was black and white. So she could be an intelligent and skilled warrior, and still come off as naive as a child when she gets thrown into the complexity of the outside world. The movie even emphasizes that with the cliché scene of her experiencing icecream for the first time. See, that’s a fundamental problem I have found with people who are judgmental over characters: They always see it from the “Global Perspective”, and either fail or outright refuse to see it from the perspective of the character they are talking about. Also the last time Wanda was portrait as smart was in 2019, during one issue of “Avengers: No Road Home”, in how she combined her powers with Monica’s. With her powers, Wanda doesn’t need to be smart every time she uses them, that doesn’t negate that she is smart. Just like in “The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes” it was a few times established that the Hulk is smart. So I take it that this iteration of the Hulk is smart, even though most of the time it works for him to solve a problem with “Hulk smash!”.

[Probability010]

What the hell is she wearing?

That’s a perfectly natural reaction to seeing that outfit for the first time It’s one of my least favorite outfits of hers. Over the course of reading the comics she had it, it had grown on me a little, but that just might be a case of getting used to it. I think her “Dark Scarlet” outfit is worse, but she wasn’t in her right mind when she put that on, so I guess that shouldn’t count. No such excuse for her initial outfit in “Force Works”, though.

[Probability010]

Another beautiful analyses about Wanda’s mental state and journey through WandaVision. Points to what I am thinking that people who say Wanda could have ended it after episode 5 are over-simplifying things. This guy puts it in such beautiful words, based on his own real-live experience!

[CosmiComic]

That’s a perfectly natural reaction to seeing that outfit for the first time It’s one of my least favorite outfits of hers. Over the course of reading the comics she had it, it had grown on me a little, but that just might be a case of getting used to it. I think her “Dark Scarlet” outfit is worse, but she wasn’t in her right mind when she put that on, so I guess that shouldn’t count. No such excuse for her initial outfit in “Force Works”, though.

Haha, I've actually read that series, but that was my reaction then!

[Eto]

Another beautiful analyses about Wanda’s mental state and journey through WandaVision. Points to what I am thinking that people who say Wanda could have ended it after episode 5 are over-simplifying things. This guy puts it in such beautiful words, based on his own real-live experience!

Great analysis!

[Eto]